Category: Religion

While I’ve been consciously taking the time to pick up on important global events, it has been easy that last couple of weeks to have been caught up in the spiralling election coverage here in Australia. So now that our quiet corner of the world has been rightfully criticised by the world, what better time to throw our sights elsewhere? Just a short one this evening.

It was my birthday today, so I didn’t have much time to write anything at all, despite it being such a big day historically in Israeli-Palestinian history. It would require too much depth to write something about that at this late hour, but there is an update on a previous piece that really cements the hypocrisy of many religious followers. That is the abortion laws that just passed in Alabama.

In a BBC interview that went viral, ‘conservative’ commentator, writer, and ‘intellectual’ Ben Shapiro cut the conversation short with interviewer Andrew Neil. He has since apologised for his conduct and to Neil, but it was a perfect showcase of a previous point I’ve made about the likes of Shapiro. What he and his followers consider “intellectual” is in fact unrivalled arrogance, with no small dash of hypocrisy.

With hope that it will get stopped somewhere through the Courts, Alabama (a US State) is likely to pass a bill that would make getting an abortion a felony. The same bill would also make it a felony for doctors to carry out the procedure, with jail terms of up to 99 years if caught doing so. I’ve spoken before about the politicising of abortion, but the debate around it comes down to a single concept – power.

I suppose watching Fox can be seen as worthwhile from an academic point of view. The manipulation and distortion of the public narrative in the media is at its zenith in Murdoch’s conservative halls, and it has interesting to see just how grand an impact it has had on the global population and its perceptions. But if not for academic purposes, I would never recommend the Trump-worshipping channel.

Notre Dame, a building with much spiritual, cultural, and historical value to the people of France, burned. The world (i.e. the West) wailed in dismay, and well over $1B has been raised for the rebuilding effort (if only the Church was so generous with its obscene wealth?). But there is a hypocrisy that many appear to have overlooked in all of this – what about our planet?

In Pt.1 I compared Noam Chomsky and Ben Shapiro over their speeches/discussions of socialism. In this post, I want to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian question, for which I will refer to those two but also many others. Just like when talking about socialism, the contrast between intelligent speakers and arrogant and hypocritical ones is rather interesting.

A friend of mine was sent a video by a relative, and she in turn sent it to me to ask my opinion on what occurred in it. At face value, the video (shared on Facebook last week) was of a woman walking through the streets of Lakemba, a New South Wales area, which is majority Muslim. The video showed her getting dirty looks as she went down the street, and a police officer approached her and told her to leave the area. Rather bizarre, until you look into it and gain context – there’s always two sides to every edited hit piece video.

Let it be known without question that the Coalition in Australia has spent the last decade running brutally divisive and racially charged campaigns to snatch up votes in elections they know they cannot win any other way. It is how Tony Abbott won in 2013, it is one of the reasons Turnbull won in 2016, and it is disgustingly possible that those filthy bastards will do so again this year with Morrison at the helm. Anning’s comments appeared to unite the Australian people against him – our politicians are not so easily agreeable.

Australian Senator Fraser Anning’s response to the Christchurch terror attack was a disgrace. It was a disgrace to Australians and our government, the letterhead of which was used in the statement, it was a disgrace to those of Islamic faith and New Zealanders as a whole, and most damningly it was a disgrace to the memory of the innocent victims that parted from us yesterday. Anning does not deserve to be a member of our Parliament, he deserves to face the full force of the consequences of his actions and the role people like him play in causing events like this to occur.